Nissan Prices $750M Auto Lease Securitization

Nissan Motor Acceptance Corp has priced $750 million of securities backed by auto leases, according to a regulatory filing.

The deal, called Nissan Auto Lease Trust (NALT) 2015-A, has four senior tranches that carry Aaa’/’AAA’ ratings from Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings, respectively.

The A2 class has a weighted average life (WAL) of 1.17 years and is split into floating and fixed rate notes: $135 million of class A-2A notes pay 35 basis points (bps) over the Eurodollar synthetic forward curve (EDSF) and $197 million of class A-2B notes pay 35 bps over-one month Libor. The class A-3 notes with a WAL of 1.89 priced at 45 bps over EDSF, followed by the 2.28 year class A-4 notes that priced at 50 bps over the interpolated swaps curve.

The collateral consists of 61,671 auto lease contracts secured by a pool comprised of entirely new vehicles. Borrowers in the pool have a weighted average (WA) FICO score of 747, which Moody’s cites as a key strength of the deal. The leases have a WA seasoning of 12 months, and a WA original term of 38 months.

In its presale report, Moody’s says that the terms of the latest deal are consistent with previous transactions completed by Nissan, but does note that the WA FICO score is at the high end of recent securitized lease pools.

Moody’s also says that, compared with Nissan's previous deal completed in 2014, "the lease distribution by quarter of maturity is more dispersed."

NALT 2015-A is the company’s twenty-first auto lease securitization; it is expected to settle June 24.

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